Big Hug Books

NEW! Purchase Big Hugs books through this web page and receive signed copies from Shona!

Shona accidentally wrote some children’s books….

Some letters, notes and badly drawn pictures that Shona posted off to the children she had seen in sessions have been turned into beautiful picture books.

The Big Hug Books are a series of picture books designed to gently talk about topics that many find emotional. Each of the stories has grown from psychological sessions with children (and sometimes with grown ups) to help them understand and talk about complex emotional situations in simple and gentle ways. Each book includes some notes for parents or teachers that can be used to guide the ways they assist their children and students. Psychologists and students of psychology will recognise the evidence-based strategies the Big Hug Books promote.

Anger is Like Armour. Anger is an emotion that lets us know that things are not how they should be. Rather than getting rid of anger, the focus needs to be on listening to, or being aware of, our anger so that we can use the angry feelings as a cue for appropriate action.

Anger is a bit like Armour

People use armour to protect themselves from getting hurt…..

We need to listen to how our anger is warning us that there is trouble, then try to work out a good way to fix the trouble…

Your Mind is Like a Garden Learning to be more mindful, to pay attention to how we feel in a given moment and to the thoughts, feelings and sensations in our body is very beneficial. Mindfulness, if mastered, can help us re-boot when we are overwhelmed, to be able to focus and flow from one task to another and allows us to interact more compassionately with others

Worries are Like Clouds compares worries to the weather, acknowledging that some days are wonderful, filled with golden sunlight that calls us outside to run and jump and play with fresh air on our faces. But some days are not so wonderful and can be a bit tough.

Some days are so wonderful we wish we could just bottle them

But other days we don’t feel like getting out of bed.

Worries are like clouds that float in and take the shine out of the day.